


it was just red

by sevendeadlyfun



Category: The Borgias (2011)
Genre: Gen, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2014-11-04
Packaged: 2018-02-24 03:34:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2566757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevendeadlyfun/pseuds/sevendeadlyfun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The red of a cardinal's robe cannot protect Cesare Borgia from the wolf in his soul.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it was just red

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meridian_rose (meridianrose)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meridianrose/gifts).



> Quotes taken from the [this translation](http://rossobella.blogspot.de/2007/09/finta-nonna.html) of the Italian story _La finta Nonna_ (The False Grandmother). This story appears in Italian oral tradition around the 14th century. The title is from [ a short poem](http://kaitrokowski.tumblr.com/post/80406157970/nothing-ever-ends-poetically-it-ends-we-turn-it) by Kait Rokowski. Many thanks to **Isis** whose feedback made this story so much better - you are greatly appreciated!

_A girl was walking through the woods with a basket of goodies for her grandmother when she met a wolf._

_****_

It is late and he is ineffably weary – the cares of the Vatican are not his father’s alone. Sitting in consistory is punishment for some sin he committed once upon a time; if he could atone for it, be free of this eternal Purgatory, he thinks he would give even his immortal soul. Standing at the foot of the stairs, Cesare hears the soft voice of his mother, distant but distinct.

His father has often urged him to leave his mother’s house and set up in some residence suitable to his new station. A cardinal, his father reminds him, must maintain a dignity above that of a bishop. But the warm circle of flickering light at the top of the stairs promises comfort, family, and Lucrezia. She is something higher and separate from the rest of his family. He does not care to think too closely about what he would do to keep her close – to keep her safe. With all of that, he cannot imagine ever leaving his family.

He follows the pull of family and Lucrezia up the stairs, his red cardinal’s robe swirling around his legs. As he peers around the doorframe, a small smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. This vision is why he fights so fiercely at his father’s side, why together they scheme and plot and kill.

His mother sits at the head of the large bed, her arm wrapped loosely around Lucrezia’s shoulders. She is protective, as they all are, of the angel God has seen fit to gift to their family.

“Now the girl did not know that the wolf was a wicked animal,” his mother says, her voice pitched low. “So she told him that she was going to visit her grandmother, who lived on the other side of the woods.”

“Foolish,” Cesare observes, leaning his head against the cool stone of the door. “A smart little girl would never talk so freely to a stranger.”

“Cesare!” Lucrezia smiles up at him and he grits his teeth against the tightness in his chest, an ache that he feels only in her presence, and misses when she is absent. “Have you come from seeing Papa? Is he well?”

He nods, the movement sharp and short. His father is not his father now. His father is the Pope of Rome. Lucrezia, old enough to be married but young enough for bedtime stories, does not yet understand the change. He thinks she will know it soon enough. He will hate their father when it happens.

“Are we finished with bedtime stories, then?” The sting of their mother’s scolding is eased by her smile.

“No, Mama,” Lucrezia pleads, large eyes shining in the candlelight. “Please?”

“For you?” Their mother places a kiss on Lucrezia’s forehead. “Anything.”

When Lucrezia is finally asleep, his mother motions him to the sitting room.  She pours him a goblet of wine without asking. It is good wine, from their family vineyards in Valencia, and he resigns himself to the interrogation he knows is coming.

“How is your father?” she asks him.

“My Holy Father,” he corrects her, “as he so often reminds me now, is as he ever has been.”

That is a lie, and his own words give the proof. He is not as he has been. He does not, as his mother said before the conclave, belong to his family, but to his people. His one, true, holy Mother Church.

“Is it so bad, then?” His mother is perceptive, and her words pierce at the heart of the matter.

“Yes,” he says and drains his glass in one gulp. “The wolves are at the door and I do not know if we have the weapons to fight them off."

_****_

_She continued merrily on her way. The wicked wolf ran on ahead and arrived at the grandmother's house before the girl. He crept inside, leaped on the poor grandmother, and ate her up, saving only a pitcher of blood and a piece of flesh._

_****_

He makes his confession only to his father, for only his father can absolve his sins.

This was true long before his father became his Holy Father, before his sins grew monstrous in the sight of God. There is no power in heaven or on earth beyond that of his father, the Pope of Rome.

  _Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa_ \- forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.

He remembers his first confession, years ago in Spain, when his father was still just a cardinal. The walls of that first confessional seemed larger, more ominous, though his sins were slighter then. A fight with Juan, he thinks, and an alfajor stolen from the counter where it lay cooling were the only stains on his soul. And yet confessing them to God in the form of his father brought him near to tears with shame.

His sister once asked to hear his confession. She asked if his hands were stained with blood and promised to save him. Her hand in his, he thinks, is the only salvation worth achieving.

Soul washed clean by confession, he kneels at the altar of Saint Peter to receive the host. His father, now resplendent in the vestments and raiment of his holy office, stands over him. His face blots out the light of the candles.  Once his father was the face of God for his family alone. Now he is Holy Father for the whole of Christendom, and his forgiveness is all-powerful.

Juan is dead, his body washed clean by the waters of the Tiber. Cesare opens his mouth to receive the body of Christ. He has no more tears now.

“Misereatur vestri omnipotens Deus, et dimissis peccatis vestris, perducat vos ad vitam aeternam,” his father intones.

 _You want to wear my armor_ , Juan had accused him, and perhaps his madness had granted him the power of divination.

He will be rid of the cardinal’s red he wears, and then he will take up the armor that sat so ill upon his brother. He has a faithful cur and his Borgia pride with which to lay waste to this land. What more does he need?

_****_

_"You must be hungry from your long walk through the woods,” said the wolf, disguising his voice. ”Do eat some of the meat that's on the kitchen table.”_

_And the girl ate from her grandmother's flesh._

_"You must be thirsty from your long walk through the woods. Do drink from the pitcher that's on the kitchen table.”_

_And the girl drank from her grandmother's blood._

_****_

“ It seems that bodies fall like leaves,” his mother observes. “First this Cardinal, then that one is dead, each gone before one can finish mourning the last.”

He turns to look at her, eyes narrow. “Do you mourn them, Mother?”

 She glances up from the cloth in her lap, lovely face placid. “Is it not right to mourn God’s fallen angels, Cesare?”

 He snorts. The cardinals he kills are no angels. They are enemies of his father, enemies of his family.  Enemies who have learned, at this late hour, to fear their displeasure.

“If they have fallen, Mother,” he says, turning back to the fire, “then they are not angels of the Lord. Such…heavenly creatures could never brought low by something as trivial as death.”

The silence between them fills the room. He hates silence – remembers too well the silence of prayer, his life filled only with the spice of incense and the gutter of candles at the altar. The press of battle is loud and all-consuming, a drumbeat which drowns out all the silences before.

“Your father wishes to know your plans. He asks me, as if I know.” His mother’s voice, in the small room, sounds louder than cannon fire. She reaches for scissors to cut the thread of her embroidery. “He fears you have lost your way.”

“I have found my way.”  Cesare’s hand reaches automatically to the sword at his side. “I will make such a mark on this Rome of ours, Mother. I swear it. The Borgia name will echo across the seven hills for centuries.”

He stares up at the fresco above the fireplace, the blood from Christ’s sacrifice on the cross shaded in the red and orange light of the flickering fire.  The lamb of God hangs suspended between life and death, between sacrifice and salvation. How often has he been suspended and left bleeding in pursuit of his father’s greater glory?

Blood, he thinks as he stares at the fresco, shimmers and ripples like satin. If he is condemned to hell, it will not be for blasphemy but for failure.

 Failure is the one sin the Holy Father does not forgive _. In nomine patri et filii,et spiritus sancti, Amen._

“Remind the Holy Father,” Cesare says, “that we are as one. We rise and fall together. He must trust me if he wishes to see all his plans for us come to their final fruition.”

“What else can he do now?” The question is not a question. His mother has never asked a question that she did not know that answer to already. She knows his answer now.

“Only give me his trust.”

“And his love, Cesare?” He does not turn around. Her dark eyes know him too well, and he thinks her keen sight might see too much, even in this dim light.

 “Affection is dangerous in this Rome of ours,” he reminds her. “Trust is enough.”

  _****_

_"You must be tired from your long walk through the woods. Do come to bed with me.”_

_And the girl climbed into bed with the wolf._

_****_

He has his army now. He will rend Italy to pieces and gobble the pieces down in great gulps. Aut Cesare, aut nihil.

 

 


End file.
